W hen you think of Africa, the first image that pops into mind is probably the wildlife or a starving child. While in some areas, the latter exists; the scene is changing. There is vibrant city life that many African countries exude. From busy restaurants in Lagos, Nigeria to beautiful rooftop lounges in Nairobi, there is a city life that combines a metropolitan lifestyle and African traditions all into one mix. The road-trip project ‘Unscrambling Africa’ sets to change the perpetuated stigma about Africa.

The Photographers

Mutua Matheka, Joe Were, Lulu Kitololo and Josh Kisamwa are all African photographers that are working toward this goal. With their vast experience, they are plan to spend 8 weeks traveling to different African cities, such as Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Traversing by road across these cities they plan to explore, document and define what urbanity means across Africa–their continent.

Nairobi by Mutua Matheka

Kenyan photographer, Mutua, spearheads this project. He has been taking photographs of Nairobi for as long as I can remember. The work he produces has been regarded for its simple elegance and dark-toned style of ‘cityscapes’ in motion. One objective that roots this project is the need for Africans to document and create their own work. With the rise of social media came an insurgence of creative work, especially from Africa.

A look through the hashtags: #VisiterLaAfrique or ‘Nairobae’ on Instagram can show a plethora of African landscapes and everyday scenes. This needs to happen for more cities within the large and vast continent. Africa is trending right now, as more people get to see and discover the true story of the continent. However, this has yet to be translated into mainstream media sources. Still, the continent gets lumped into one monolith and it is finally time to address this problem head-on.

When I stumbled upon this project, ‘Unscrambling Africa’ on Twitter, I was excited to see something that was created by like-minded African photographers for other Africans to see. This project is being funded through people on Kickstarter. To find out more information: check out their link: http://kck.st/2gqnhZE